


count us out (our numbered days)

by andibeth82



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Nancy Wheeler's feelings deserve some attention, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: The first time Nancy lied to her parents, she was seven, and it was because Mike knocked over some flour.The last time Nancy lied to her parents, she was fifteen, and Barb was supposed to drive her to a school assembly.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vera_invenire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vera_invenire/gifts).



> This kind of took a slightly angsty turn as I was writing it, but I hope you enjoy it :) This show was one of my favorite new obsessions of 2016 and I'm so glad I got to write about it. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Title taken and slightly amended from Clive Barker's _Days of Magic, Nights of War_.

The first time Nancy lied to her parents, she was seven. Mike had run too fast through the kitchen and knocked over a bowl of flour, scattering white dust all over the floor. The porcelain fell onto the hardwood and shattered and Mike, for his part, might as well have thought that Christmas came early -- literally, judging by the mess of powdery white.

Karen Wheeler had rushed into the kitchen, wanting to know what had happened. Nancy and Mike stared at her, and Nancy had admitted that she and Mike were playing and she had knocked the bowl over. It was her fault. Nancy was grounded for two days, and Mike got a bath and some hugs. 

The first time Nancy lied to her parents, she was seven, and it was because Mike knocked over some flour.

The last time Nancy lied to her parents, she was fifteen, and Barb was supposed to drive her to a school assembly.

 

 

(These are the things Nancy remembers about Barb:

-She had an infectious laugh that also sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

-She always smelled like the strong floral perfume that Nancy had gotten her one year as a Christmas gift, that she never went anywhere without.

-She had a crease in the corner of her eye -- not age-related, just genetic -- and it always crinkled whenever she was concerned about something Nancy was telling her.

-She ran away because she was jealous of Nancy and Steve being together. She had disappeared from Hawkins and never returned.)

 

 

People assumed Nancy was a straight square, a smarty-pants too good for everyone in school. Too good for her family. Too good for her nerdy brother, Mike.

Too good for Barb. 

Barb brought it up a lot, around the dinner table or when they were breaking apart peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during school lunches and sharing their goods with each other. Nancy would laugh off Barb’s worries about choosing her friend over going to the dances and football games she was always invited to. Nancy  _liked_ being with Barb. She liked being with Barb a hell of a lot more than she liked being with stuck-up kids at Hawkins, that's for sure.

When Steve showed an interest in her, she could almost feel Barb laughing underneath her stoic façade. Because, _oh my god Nancy Wheeler, you are the epitome of Hawkins’ popular girl if you date Steve Harrington, of all people_.

It was a joke, mostly. But underneath, Nancy knew Barb was worried that maybe she would go too far, and one day, there would be no more Barb and Nancy. And so Nancy vowed she would always have Barb by her side –- through high school, through college, after college. Boyfriends came and went, but girlfriends were supposed to be forever.

Somehow, the opposite happened.

 

 

They called it a mysterious disappearance, after they realized Barb was missing. Even before the Upside-Down and Steve and Jonathan and the Demogorgon or whatever the hell Mike and his friends called that pretend-but-not-pretend monster, Nancy knew that was a lie. Barb wasn’t happy with Nancy and Steve; she had made _that_ quite clear when they’d officially started dating. But Barb would never just run from a situation and give up because she was upset. Barb was a fighter. 

Perhaps that’s why, when she found out what really happened to Barb in that godforsaken place –- how she hadn’t even been given a chance to fight back from her death -- she cried in the shower.

Steve brought her flowers on the anniversary of Barb’s death. Jonathan accompanied her to the gravesite they had erected, a neat pile of rocks marked with a thick mound of dirt in the middle of the forest near where Nancy had been taken to the Upside-Down, because it only seemed right, and because no one had bothered to build Barb a real headstone in a real cemetery.

They asked Nancy to say something. They looked at her, one on each side, and stood in silence. But the thing is, they didn’t understand, and Nancy couldn’t make them understand that Barb was the one who was good at words. Barb always had the witty dialogue, the best comebacks, the best ideas.

Barb was good at words. Nancy was good at being _good_.

Nancy's still good -- she's still trying -- but she has no words, now, because Barb’s not here, and she's never had to do it alone.

 

 

In 1970, Karen Wheeler (then Karen Conrad) took a wrong turn and ended up at a singles dance, where she met Ted Wheeler, a wealthy financial accountant. They married quickly, despite the fact Karen was only twenty at the time. 

Nancy knew the truth about her mom and dad. Like her, they were cookie-cutter perfect on the outside but screaming on the inside. Like her, they created a persona for themselves that became a second skin, one they put on so many times it eventually just stuck to them permanently. Nancy and Ted Wheeler hadn’t married for love. They had married for convenience, for the perfect house with the white picket fence (mom) and for the perfect professions that would make a perfect family (dad).

Dad wanted Nancy to be the girl next door, and mom wanted Nancy to be the family’s crown jewel. “Mike is wonderful,” she would say, while looking at Nancy’s flawless report card and watching Mike ride away on his bike with Lucas. “But Mike might never grow up. You understand why that's troubling, don't you? We’re so glad you’re growing up, Nance.”

Nancy, not wanting to disappoint her parents who had so many dreams of the idealistic life they couldn’t have had in their own childhood, slipped on her second skin, and decided she had to grow up. Mike could keep being a kid. He was good at that –- him and Dustin and Lucas and Will, their own little (eye-roll) _Fellowship Of The Ring_ hobbit group. Nancy didn’t need a ton of friends to have fun with. Nancy had Barb, and that was enough.

Nancy grew up too fast. She's only now realizing that she wishes she hadn't.

 

 

(She looks at her gown, bathed in rose-red Hawkins pride. It doesn’t quite fit her correctly, despite the fact she knows she was measured for it at the beginning of the year –- the sleeves are too long, and the entire robe drapes shapelessly over her body like a wave of blood. Nancy thinks maybe it doesn’t fit her anymore because she’s not the same person she was six months ago, even though she looks the same on the outside.

The robe reminds her of Barb’s hair, so Nancy takes a permanent marker and draws a small pair of glasses on the sleeve, where she knows no one will notice.)

 

 

People were never going to believe that Barb’s disappearance wasn’t because of Nancy and Steve. It’s just the way it was going to be.

Maybe that’s why Nancy’s mom sometimes looks disapproving whenever Nancy mentions Barb. People talk in Hawkins, and Nancy’s mother goes to all kinds of book groups and tennis lessons, and places where people gossip their ears off.

Every so often, Jonathan will find pictures in the dark room –- old pictures of Barb taken from the yearbook; Barb captured forever with her knowing smirk and red hair and oversized glasses. He brings Nancy the pictures and she puts them under her bed in a box. Sometimes, she takes them out when she feels she can look at them without getting too sad. Her therapist tells her she should accept her grief, and use it to grow.

(Mike gets to mourn the death of his friend, the girl with the pink dress. Nancy is told to grow.)

Nancy’s been growing forever, because her parents always wanted her to. Nancy doesn’t want to grow anymore.

But she does want to live, because Barb never had a chance to.

 

 

The first time Nancy lied to her parents, she was seven, and it was because Mike knocked over some flour.

 The last time Nancy lied to her parents, she was eighteen, and she said “I’m okay” before she tacked a photo of her and Barb to the wall of her dorm room at NYU.


End file.
